RE: Add option to git to ignore binary files unless force added

From: Randall S. Becker <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
Date: May 18, 2018, 15:37 UTC
Message-ID: <009901d3eebe$32dd09a0$98971ce0$@nexbridge.com>
In-Reply-To: <FE668F59-95D7-48AB-AD3B-A37AE404B368@anmol.io>

On May 18, 2018 7:31 AM, Anmol Sethi <me@anmol.io>

Show 38 quoted lines

> That works but most binaries do not have a file extension. Its just not
> standard on linux.
> 
> > On May 17, 2018, at 8:37 AM, Randall S. Becker <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > On May 16, 2018 11:18 PM, Jacob Keller
> >> On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 5:45 PM, Anmol Sethi <me@anmol.io> wrote:
> >>> I think it’d be great to have an option to have git ignore binary
> >>> files. My
> >> repositories are always source only, committing a binary is always a
> mistake.
> >> At the moment, I have to configure the .gitignore to ignore every
> >> binary file and that gets tedious. Having git ignore all binary files would be
> great.
> >>>
> >>> This could be achieved via an option in .gitconfig or maybe a
> >>> special line in
> >> .gitignore.
> >>>
> >>> I just want to never accidentally commit a binary again.
> >>
> >> I believe you can do a couple things. There should be a hook which
> >> you can modify to validate that there are no binary files on
> >> pre-commit[1], or pre- push[2] to verify that you never push commits
> with binaries in them.
> >>
> >> You could also implement the update hook on the server if you control
> >> it, to allow it to block pushes which contain binary files.
> >
> > What about configuring ${HOME}/.config/git/ignore instead (described at
> https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore). Inside, put:
> >
> > *.o
> > *.exe
> > *.bin
> > *.dat
> > Etc....

I have a similar problem on my platform, with a different solution. My builds involve GCC binaries, NonStop L-series binaries (x86), and a NonStop J-series binaries (itanium). To keep me sane, I have all build targets going to separate directories, like Build/GCC, Build/Lbin, Build/Jbin away from the sources. This allows me to ignore Build/ regardless of extension and also to build different targets without link collisions. This is similar to how Java works (a.k.a. bin/). Much more workable, IMHO, than trying to manage individual binaries name by name or even by extension. I also have a mix of jpg and UTF-16 HTML that would end up in false-positives on a pure binary match and I do want to manage those.

What helps me is that I do most of my work in ECLIPSE, so derived resources (objects, generated sources) get auto-ignored by EGit, if you can make your compiler arrange that - but that's an ECLIPSE thing not a file system thing.

Cheers, Randall

-- Brief whoami:
 NonStop developer since approximately 211288444200000000
 UNIX developer since approximately 421664400
-- In my real life, I talk too much.